belinda Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 (edited) HI FOLKS, after reading kbps's thread i began playing around with \pc\data\timecyc.dat to find any performance relevant entries to either gain more fps or increase visual quality. timecyc.dat controls visual effects depending on ingame time and weather. for each weather condition (EXTRASUNNY, SUNNY, SUNNY_WINDY, CLOUDY, RAIN, FOGGY, LIGHTNING, TEMP) there is a block of eleven lines with numerical values, each defining the visuals for a certain period of time. the other lines beginning with //... are comments explaining the file structure. to apply any changes you have to make your gamefiles moddable somehow. and remember to backup everything before changing anything. all screenshots are done with ati tray tool's osd feature enabled to display fps and free video memory ingame. -> FarClp this one is setting the distance for clipping (= not rendering) the gameworld. standard value is 1500.00 except for some timeslots of TEMP condition. i think that's a very high value considering it's forced to everyone regardless of system performance and ingame settings. so i tried various other values to check performance impact and visual changes. first a series of screens done north of booth tunnel (EXTRASUNNY, Midday): -----------250.00-----------------------500.00----------------------750.00----------------------1500.00----------------------2500.00----------- a nice fps difference going from standard to 750.00 or even 500.00. i suppose both values have high enough view distance to acomplish any missions on foot, vehicle or heli. please note the visual glitch when using 250.00. next a series of pics done at the northernmost spot on columbus avenue (EXTRASUNNY, Midday): -----------250.00-----------------------500.00----------------------750.00----------------------1500.00----------------------2500.00----------- the screens already show a nice performance increase lowering FarClp to 750.00 or even 500.00. but also driving columbus ave down with full speed shows improvements. with 1500.00 performance dipped down to 16 fps while racing along the park. with 500.00 it never goes below 20 fps. it generally feels smoother when driving around town, it seems to take some load from the whole textures / geometry streaming process. i recommend anybody to try 750.00 or maybe 1000.00. it brings a little fps increase, smoother gameplay while moving with no heavy visual drawbacks. increasing FarClp further brings more view distance and pushes the distance fog connected to it further away. nice for heli tours with brucie or anybody with maxed out ingame settings but still higher than necessary fps. but it's mostly not conspicuous while on ground. -> CONCLUSION FarClp is a nice start in tweaking the timecyc.dat. players willing to sacrifice some view distance will get higher fps and smoother gameplay - within realistic expectations of course. best practice is not to choose one value for all weather / time slots, but reduce it more for situations you get lower fps like rain. after playing around with it i ended up with this: - values of first image is used in EXTRASUNNY and SUNNY, the ones from the second image in SUNNY_WINDY and CLOUDY. DRIZZLE, RAIN and FOGGY are a big fps hit on my old gfx card, so i use 500.00 for it in all time slots. LIGHTNING is set to 400.00 again for performance reasons, but the shorter view distance fits quite good to those weather conditions. i will try to find more helpful values and any help is highly appreciated. a good start is my cleaned timecyc.dat. i copied the EXTRASUNNY, Midday timeslot to every other timeslot and formatted it with spaces to make it easier to read and tweak. so no matter what condition the game is using internally, you will always get the EXTRASUNNY, Midday condition. remember, if you change any value, you have to change it in the whole column because you have no control about what condition / timeslot combination is used when loading the game. also i'm not sure if all descriptor <-> value connections i supposed are correct. and i have no idea what the many values below GlobalSunMultiplierAmbientOcclusionScaler mean, any insight by a talented modder will make me very happy -> MY SETTINGS resolution: 1280x800 @ 60hz texturequality: medium renderquality: high viewdistance: 23 detaildistance: 18 cardensity: 13 shadowdensity: 0 clipcapture: off ingame resource estimation: 389 / 480 mb -> MY COMMANDLINE.TXT -minspecaudio -frameLimit 0 -novblank -availablevidmem 1.0 -memrestrict 408944640 -> MY SYSTEM amd athlon x2 6000+ 2x 1gb mdt ddr2-800 asrock alivedual-esata2 his x1950pro agp 512mb turbo samsung syncmaster 205bw soundblaster live 1024 player windows xp pro sp3 directx nov2008 ati catalyst v8.11 everything else up-to-date Edited January 21, 2009 by belinda Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
postem Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 Nice man thats good. I also changed the popcycle file. If you see the file, for some sectors the #peds value is high as 60. As cpu takes a lot on this game, and usually in car you dont look much peds, its interesting to lower max peds. The vehicle density also doesnt change the amount of peds. I changed to max 30, in places like star junction. Now its at least 30 fps on those areas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MâTRîX Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 Belinda can you help me please. Whenever I change values of any file in my GTA IV folder in Program Files my game does'nt want to launch?? When I click Play at the RGSC interface I wait then my mouse pointer changes to a CD runing then the Disc in my drive runs then the LaunchGTAIV.exe pops up then it just exit again then my game does'nt wane Launch? Can you help me please? If I change all value back it Launches? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YoungGun Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 worth a try. thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TTKRickJames Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Belinda can you help me please.Whenever I change values of any file in my GTA IV folder in Program Files my game does'nt want to launch?? When I click Play at the RGSC interface I wait then my mouse pointer changes to a CD runing then the Disc in my drive runs then the LaunchGTAIV.exe pops up then it just exit again then my game does'nt wane Launch? Can you help me please? If I change all value back it Launches? Are you using the fix file check mod? If not that might be your issue... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wachumanango Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 nice finding, this deservers a sticky on the modding section Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelated Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Very nice. I'm interested in playing with the Blur setting and the Particle HDR effects. Off to tweak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YoungGun Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 I used your timecyc.dat file belinda and i didnt see much of a performance difference.. If you see the file, for some sectors the #peds value is high as 60. As cpu takes a lot on this game, and usually in car you dont look much peds, its interesting to lower max peds. The vehicle density also doesnt change the amount of peds. I changed to max 30, in places like star junction. Now its at least 30 fps on those areas. How do u increase the number of AI peds?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ahm3dS Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 so i have to open it with notepad and change all 1500 to 750 ???? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MâTRîX Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Belinda can you help me please.Whenever I change values of any file in my GTA IV folder in Program Files my game does'nt want to launch?? When I click Play at the RGSC interface I wait then my mouse pointer changes to a CD runing then the Disc in my drive runs then the LaunchGTAIV.exe pops up then it just exit again then my game does'nt wane Launch? Can you help me please? If I change all value back it Launches? Are you using the fix file check mod? If not that might be your issue... Where do I get the fix file check mod? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noVa Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 so i have to open it with notepad and change all 1500 to 750 ???? or you can download something like notepad++ and edit it in there using the replace function. also makes other thing easier to edit as it keeps the file structure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ahm3dS Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 ahh... after finished testeing result: Nothing... before 18avg fps after 18avg fps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noVa Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 i got at most a 1-3 fps gain from this, so don't expect miricles, not tried the peds thing though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
One-time Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Nice, I'm replacing those 1500 values to 500 now. I hope I'll get a noticeable fps boost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NecroViolator Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Nothing new... Did this the same day GTA Magic was released... I really dont see much of a FPS boost, sorta like the game renders everything no matter what... Gonna try on 250...There must be a better way for FPS... Gonna play Saints Row 2 now...Later...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ahm3dS Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Nothing new...Did this the same day GTA Magic was released... I really dont see much of a FPS boost, sorta like the game renders everything no matter what... Gonna try on 250...There must be a better way for FPS... Gonna play Saints Row 2 now...Later...... wots ur pc specs ? and is SR2 working OK on ur pc now ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NecroViolator Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Playing on my low end machine, Dual Xeon, Quad Core, 8800GTS 1G... Also, about editing the file "timecyc.dat" , sorrry I mixed it up with another file that you have "farclip" in there and I edit it but nothing really happens... Kinda strange that so many files have "farclip" in them... Dont know which to edit for best results... ***sigh*** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TTKRickJames Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Belinda can you help me please.Whenever I change values of any file in my GTA IV folder in Program Files my game does'nt want to launch?? When I click Play at the RGSC interface I wait then my mouse pointer changes to a CD runing then the Disc in my drive runs then the LaunchGTAIV.exe pops up then it just exit again then my game does'nt wane Launch? Can you help me please? If I change all value back it Launches? Are you using the fix file check mod? If not that might be your issue... Where do I get the fix file check mod? In my opinion this is the best version of it available. http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=380830 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelated Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 (edited) I ran a bunch of benchmarks using Fraps and using the in game bench. There are small increases and decreases for certain things but like someone above posted don't expect a miracle. At most you will see a 3-5FPS change either up or down. If you guys want I'll post them. Actually the Far Clip tweak is a nice way to boost draw distance without having the huge CPU and memory draw that the in game options Draw distance has. I was playing around with the Far Clip and Particle HDR settings. Setting Far Clip to 3000 makes the entire city crystal clear from anywhere. If you are looking for a performance increase the best one I have found is the one where you trick GTA IV into thinking you are playing at 800x600 and out of video memory so it won't scale the water, reflections and shadows with the resolution. It gave me a nice boost but I abandoned it after a while because I couldn't stand the way the shadows looked anymore. That seems to be the only downside. Edited January 8, 2009 by Pixelated Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
belinda Posted January 9, 2009 Author Share Posted January 9, 2009 @ MâTRîX have you even read my whole post? ...you have to make your gamefiles moddable... @ wachumanango many ppl hanging around in the modding forums are fully aware of that. i posted it here to get regular players only checking the troubleshooting section to try it out too. @ Pixelated have you found out anything about the blur, dof, or particlehdr values inside timecyc.dat? i tried many changes but it only resulted to strange effects like a purple skybox. nothing i tried affected the ingame "press p" blur-everything-slightly/dof/motionblur combination effect. strange to see you had some benchmarks with less fps after reducing farclp. it always brought some increase (as my screens indicate) for me. but its like almost all tweaks brought up until now very dependent on system and settings. and i tried monkeymhz's ultimate gtaiv performance fix too. i had no measurable fps increase or noticeable stuttering reduction and didn't like the big-pixelated water reflections. @ YoungGun you have a somewhat powerful system and should not have much performance problems if you choose reasonable ingame settings. try raising it to 2500 or even more to see even farther and reduce the fog seen in the distance without having a big fps hit. @ Ahm3dS better change all 1500.00 to the value you want to try, like 750.00. then scroll down to the ////////// TEMP section and look for farclp. change the whole column (starting with 1382.82, 1200.00...) too. @ noVa standard windows notepad.exe has a replace function too. and 1-3 fps more is quite interesting depending on the values before. first row of screenshots above gives me a 17% increase, second row 10% increase when going from 1500 to 500. @ NecroViolator i don't think everything is rendered despite farclp reduction. my screenshot above show that fps raise and vram usage lowers because less distance texures and geometry has to be loaded, processed and rendered. i even tried (the unplayable) value of 100 with about 30m sight left and fps goes really high, lol. but i think it helps more in situations where the gfx card is the actual bottleneck. if your cpu is limiting fps you won't see much or any changes. and don't confuse timecyc.dat with the four timecyclemodifiers.dat files in the same folder. they contain changes to the timecyc.dat values when entering certain locations, mostly indoor. and since indoor fps is ok for most people it's not worth changing farclp in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelated Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 (edited) Here are the tests I ran on my PC. I used the GTA benchmark and FRAPS. For the FRAPS test I did a sprint run in my Coqette from the apartment in Bohan to the Gas station in Hove Beach (south east of the gun shop), turned around and went back. I started and ended each test outside in the car that way the test wouldn't be affected by the 75FPS I get indoors. All tests were done with the same settings. No command line parameters were used. For these test I ran my PC using these hardware settings: CPU: Q6600 3.6Ghz RAM: DDR2 1066Mhz 5-5-5-15 GPU: 8800GTX Core: 626Mhz Memory:2000Mhz //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Settings Used ============================== Graphics Settings Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (75 Hz) Texture Quality: High Render Quality: Highest View Distance: 20 Detail Distance: 65 Vehicle Density: 50 Shadow Density: 0 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Normal (No Tweaks) =============================== Statistics Average FPS: 45.80 Duration: 37.01 sec CPU Usage: 76% System memory usage: 89% Video memory usage: 98% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (75 Hz) Texture Quality: High Render Quality: Highest View Distance: 20 Detail Distance: 65 Hardware Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate Service Pack 1 Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Video Driver version: 185.20 Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi) Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz Fraps Normal (No Tweaks) =============================== Min, Max, Avg 22, 44, 31.157 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// FarClip 2500.00 =============================== Statistics Average FPS: 45.21 Duration: 37.12 sec CPU Usage: 78% System memory usage: 75% Video memory usage: 98% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (75 Hz) Texture Quality: High Render Quality: Highest View Distance: 20 Detail Distance: 65 Hardware Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate Service Pack 1 Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Video Driver version: 185.20 Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi) Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz FRAPS FarClip 2500.00 =============================== Min, Max, Avg 22, 43, 29.689 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ParticleHDR Min 0.00 =============================== Statistics Average FPS: 42.61 Duration: 37.08 sec CPU Usage: 75% System memory usage: 71% Video memory usage: 98% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (75 Hz) Texture Quality: High Render Quality: Highest View Distance: 20 Detail Distance: 65 Hardware Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate Service Pack 1 Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Video Driver version: 185.20 Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi) Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz FRAPS ParticleHDR Min 0.00 =============================== Min, Max, Avg 22, 47, 31.228 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ParticleHDR Min 0.00 FarClip 750.00 =============================== Statistics Average FPS: 49.25 Duration: 36.97 sec CPU Usage: 77% System memory usage: 86% Video memory usage: 99% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (75 Hz) Texture Quality: High Render Quality: Highest View Distance: 20 Detail Distance: 65 Hardware Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate Service Pack 1 Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Video Driver version: 185.20 Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi) Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz FRAPS ParticleHDR Min 0.00 FarClip 750.00 =============================== Min, Max, Avg 22, 50, 34.206 ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////END As you can see the real world FRAPS bench is much harder than the cheap Rockstar GTA IV (Joke) benchmark. On average real game play will knock about 15FPS off your actual GTA benchmark results. Gee thanks for the killer benchmarking utility Rockstar! //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// PICTURES //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Normal 7AM (No Tweaks) Normal 7PM (No Tweaks) ParticleHDR Min 0.00 FarClip 750 7AM ParticleHDR Min 0.00 FarClip 750 7PM I also did a Far Clip 15000.00 just for kicks and you could see where the game world ended. FarClip 15000.00 Edited January 10, 2009 by Pixelated Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
belinda Posted January 9, 2009 Author Share Posted January 9, 2009 big big post man, and it shows the same results i expect on a high performance machine like yours: Fraps Normal (No Tweaks) - - > FRAPS ParticleHDR Min 0.00 ======================================= Min, Max, Avg - - - - - - - - - - > Min, Max, Avg 22, 44, 31.157 - - - - - - - - - - > 22, 47, 31.228 particlehdr min 0.00 seems to make no noticeable difference in average framerates, which is the interesting value here. Fraps Normal (No Tweaks) - - > FRAPS ParticleHDR Min 0.00 FarClip 750.00 ================================================ Min, Max, Avg - - - - - - - - - - > Min, Max, Avg 22, 44, 31.157 - - - - - - - - - - > 22, 50, 34.206 but when using 750.00 instead of 1500.00 your average fps increase about ~10%. Fraps Normal (No Tweaks) - - > FRAPS FarClip 2500.00 ==================================== Min, Max, Avg - - - - - - - - - - > Min, Max, Avg 22, 44, 31.157 - - - - - - - - - - > 22, 43, 29.689 raising it to 2500.00 gives you a ~5% decrease but nothing to worry about. i would play with that if i had your setup and you did mess up your screens: ParticleHDR Min 0.00 FarClip 750 7AM is identical to FarClip 2500 7AM ParticleHDR Min 0.00 FarClip 750 7PM is identical to FarClip 2500 7PM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelated Posted January 10, 2009 Share Posted January 10, 2009 sh*t you're right about the pictures. I already deleted them too. I'll see if I can redo them later, if you want. The Particle HDR seems to basically get rid of any sun effects and had little effect on performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
belinda Posted January 10, 2009 Author Share Posted January 10, 2009 not really needed if you ask me, since its not performance related. any other tweaks regarding timecyc.dat affecting performance are highly appreciated though. ot: had a bad experience the last few hours. installed hl2 orange box again and applied the new cinematic mod v9.5. quite impressive what good old hl2 is able to look like when pushed to its limits. after playing that for a while i wanted to start a new gta 4 game (unfortunately i finished the main story two days ago). 10 out of 10 tries to watch the intro sequence crashed with "out of video memory", resc10 errors or even atikvmag.dll bluescreens which i never had before with gta 4. drove me nuts, reinstalled catalyst, played with gta 4 ingame settings, commandline.txt entries, restored all original files i modded so far. no success, still crashing at the latest when leaving the boat. until i remembered setting /3gb /userva=2560 in the windows xp boot.ini to allow hl2 to use more than 2gb ram. removed those entries and dada: gta 4 crash free again. puh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelated Posted January 10, 2009 Share Posted January 10, 2009 not really needed if you ask me, since its not performance related. any other tweaks regarding timecyc.dat affecting performance are highly appreciated though. ot: had a bad experience the last few hours. installed hl2 orange box again and applied the new cinematic mod v9.5. quite impressive what good old hl2 is able to look like when pushed to its limits. after playing that for a while i wanted to start a new gta 4 game (unfortunately i finished the main story two days ago). 10 out of 10 tries to watch the intro sequence crashed with "out of video memory", resc10 errors or even atikvmag.dll bluescreens which i never had before with gta 4. drove me nuts, reinstalled catalyst, played with gta 4 ingame settings, commandline.txt entries, restored all original files i modded so far. no success, still crashing at the latest when leaving the boat. until i remembered setting /3gb /userva=2560 in the windows xp boot.ini to allow hl2 to use more than 2gb ram. removed those entries and dada: gta 4 crash free again. puh. Hmm.. I added the PAE switch to my Windows 7 boot.ini and then couldn't get GTA IV to start anymore. Maybe that's why? Time wise it was far apart from the last time I played it so I didn't make the connection. I also reset any mods I did but it didn't help. I'll remove the switch and try again. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
belinda Posted January 10, 2009 Author Share Posted January 10, 2009 yea, check your boot options and try to reset them to standard values. if your problems are solved after that, one of us should make a new thread regarding gta 4 boot.ini Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TygerGoose Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Ok, I second that on the /3GB switch. I have just upped my ram to 3GB in the vain hope of getting GTA to utilize the extra ram. Adding the /3GB switch killed the game. Missing textures, floating cars, and random crashes. I thought it was the paging file, which I had set to 4096MB initially. Changing that down to 2048MB made no difference. It was only by removing the /3GB switch that I could actually play the game again. Oddly, I can run at 800x600, medium, low, 1, 10, 40, 0 without too much jerkiness, even in the rain. I did actually set the available vidmem to 1.3 while toning down FarClp to 1000 and with the other bloom, raindrop, reflection settings as in the older thread on the x1950PRO. Prior to this I could only run on 700x525 and it was pretty jerky during a storm still. It seems like more memory is needed for GTA but perhaps not that much especially for xp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
belinda Posted January 21, 2009 Author Share Posted January 21, 2009 added a little entry about fps dependend settings in timecyc.dat, since it's not the best solution to set farclp to one value in all weather / timeslot combinations. use lower farclp for weather situations (like rain) which hit fps heavy, and try raising it for weather / timeslot combinations you get high fps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHILLI Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 sorry for bumping like this... but I have to give you 60Gamer points for this! I went from (using fraps) 15-20 to 25-30 even 40FPS!!! you're the devil in a good way like Jacon would say "One love" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uk_john Posted August 28, 2009 Share Posted August 28, 2009 Thanks for bothering to help us low end PC users, not many PC gamers care a jot about if they have a rig that runs a game great. You, on the other hand, have given a great explanation and offered actual files to help us. Along with other posters that have given links to other threads, I just want to say a big thank you!!! Rather than better fps,I have smoother fps, which, in my book, is better. I also do not get the 5 second to 20 second '5 frames a minute' type lags that used to come out of nowhere (i.e not just when the screen was 'busy') and disappeared just as strangely! I also don't know if I am the only one, but compared to many games, I do not see a huge difference between Low Textures and Medium Textures. I think if setting Low Textures allows for High Shadows, Reflections and setting a longer Draw Distance, then the overall look is comparable with Medium Textures and those other settings set lower because of it! My tip is that I set Detail to 100, regardless of what I set Draw Distance at, as it does not use any memory and makes a big difference to longer views even where the Draw Distance is set fairly low. Thanks again to everyone who has given helpful advice in this thread - kudos to you all, with a special award to the OP! Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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